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The Juke

So, when do you juke? Is it even

effective? Eh, it depends. It’s not a primary cutting

tool–running hard will always force the defense to do SOMETHING; a good defender might not respond at all to a juke. But, it CAN be effective if you’ve properly read your defender and the situation. Your defender should generally be pretty

close to you. If they’re too far, even if they bite on the juke it might not be enough to put them out of position/off balance enough to exploit. It helps if you know your defender

is very aggressive–I’ve found, for instance, that defenders will often try to compensate for my being faster than them (I’m not faster than everybody, but it’s usually enough to make them struggle) by really pouncing on my first step–they accelerate harder than I do when I start my cuts, allowing them to keep up with me when I’m up to speed. A very simple way to punish this is with a good one- or two-step juke–they’ll be accelerating so quickly that you’ll have them completely selling out in one direction and you can easily take the other (this usually applies to a juke in the direction your defender is giving you). Multiple jukes very very rarely work.

Or at least, it’s not really my style. You might be able to get away with this as a handler (and indeed, sometimes it’s necessary at a high stall in order to get that critical half-step of separation), but as a downfield cutter anything that takes more than a second or two before you get open or start clearing, that isn’t a long cut, is just clogging. Even if you do get open, oftentimes multiple quick fakes can be hard to read and you’ll suffer from “oh, you had ‘em” syndrome–the throw comes but you were actually juking the other way. Whoops. Sometimes you can use jukes just to

get your opponent off-balance. Again, you have to read your defender well to pull this off–after a couple times, they will adjust. But the so-called chop step does

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have limited application here–again, if the defender is close a good juke can be enough to get your defender on his heels or start him turning his hips to create an opening for you to go the other way. Generally speaking I’m not a big fan of the chop-step as a cut initiator–but if I’m already in motion and the disc is moving (e.g., I’m making an in cut as the disc is swung) without the defense noticing, making a short juke towards what was previously threatening space and then quickly attacking the space that is actually viable will often be enough, assuming you’re as fast as the person guarding you. As a general rule, jukes don’t get you wide open as much as they get you a little bit of separation. This is why the juke tends to be more common in the handler’s arsenal, where short separation is all that’s necessary. I find the jukes can be very effective if you’ve set up your defender to expect you to pick a direction and run, but you absolutely HAVE to establish yourself as a running cutter before you can expect jukes to do you any good (or just have a bad defender covering you, which is not impossible! In such instances you can exploit whatever moves said defender is not prepared for). But again, they’re a secondary tool. Get yourself in shape and learn to attack space first.

Use your Opponent’s

Acceleration

As I alluded to earlier you can hose your

defender by getting him on his heels, or by getting him to commit his hips and then go the other direction. I’ve also alluded to the notion that it’s possible to compensate for being off- balance (ie, having your hips committed) by having a good degree of strength. It is often (or occasionally, depending on your level of play) not enough to simply get your defender to have her hips committed. You have to catch her accelerating. If your opponent is still speeding up in

the direction her hips are committed, she will not only have to turn those hips, but fight the force she’s just been applying

in order to change direction. This is in contrast to cruising at a constant speed (or accelerating/decelerating slowly), where all force applied is going to change speed and direction. There is an inertia to an accelrating defender that you won’t see at rest or when cruising. So, how do you create and exploit such an opening? This is where the beauty of the juke comes in, of the chop-step, the two- step feint. It’s all about a quick change of motion. Particularly if you are already in motion, a quick one-two in a different direction will have your defender scrambling to keep pace–accelerating harder than you–and you’ll have an easier time changing it up than they will at that point. You really should be getting your opponent accelerating as hard as he can here–the harder (faster) he can accelerate, the bigger the potential to exploit it when they’re going all-out. If you’re sub- maximum, your opponent is more likely to be accelerating under control–and while you might still be able to exploit the gap in acceleration between you, it’s less likely to win you big separation. Some knowledge and feel for your opponent is necessary here (as is often the case). This works especially well if you are a

fast/explosive cutter (or at least, if you are relative to your opponent/she thinks you are relative to her). If your defender knows that she cannot keep up with you in a footrace, when you set up footrace- type cuts (i.e., taking what she gives you– running straight in from the back of the stack without faking or with a quick chop- step) she’ll compensate for the speed gap by pushing hard to accelerate to top speed in the first few steps while you’re still in a lower gear to try and get ahead of you. This is what I really mean by using your opponent’s acceleration–know what will cause her to speed up too much and lose control, if only for an instant, and be prepared to exploit it when she does. »U

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